But perhaps they did know the place, for in the pure flow of animal grace they half trotted, half pronged south along the cliff edge to a little embayment. This turned out to be the top of a steep ravine, down which rubble siphoned onto the canyon floor. As the antelope disappeared down this slot all the hunters rushed to the rim, where they looked on as the three animals descended the ravine, in an astonishing display of power and balance, clacking from rock to rock in tremendous leaps down. One of the hunters howled, “Owwwwwwwww,” and with that cry all the hunters hurried over to the head of the ravine, yelping and grunting. Nirgal joined the others and dropped over the rim and then they were all in a mad descent, clacking and jumping, and though Nirgal’s legs were rubbery his endless days of lung-gom now served him well, for he dropped past most of the others as he hopped down boulders and glissaded down little rockslides, jumping, holding balance, using his hands, making great desperate leaps, like everyone else utterly locked into the moment, into the striving for a quick descent without a bad fall.

Only when he was successfully on the canyon floor did Nirgal look up again, to see that the canyon was filled by the forest he had barely seen from above. Trees stood high over a needle-strewn floor of old snow, big fir and pine, and then, upcanyon to the south, the unmistakably massive trunks of giant sequoias, big trees, trees so huge that the canyon suddenly seemed shallow, though the descent of the ravine had taken quite a while. These were the treetops that had stuck up over the canyon rim; engineered giant sequoias two hundred meters tall, towering like great silent saints, each one extending its arms in a broad circle over daughter trees, the fir and pine, the thin patchy snow and the brown needle beds.

The antelope had trotted upcanyon into this primeval forest, headed south, and with a few happy hoots the hunters followed them, darting past one huge trunk after another. The massive cylinders of riven red bark dwarfed everything else— they all looked like little animals, like mice, dashing over a snowy forest floor in the failing light. Nirgal’s skin tingled down his back and flanks, he was still adrenalated from the descent of the ravine, panting and light-headed. It was obvious that they could not catch the antelope, he didn’t understand what they were doing. Nevertheless he raced between the stupendous trees, following the lead hunters. The chase itself was all he wanted.